“You-all are in charge of the Relief Commission, suh? I am Mistah Solslog, of Alabama. I’m lookin’ for my sistah.”

The tense blue eyes of my fellow-countryman stared at me searchingly, and I at him. He wore a rubber collar and a false shirt front of a style which afforded popular subjects for caricature twenty-five years ago. His salt-and-pepper suit was cheap, horribly cheap, thin, cotton, summer weight, but immaculate. His hat—an old, well-brushed Stetson—was in his hand. He had no luggage. In the cold winter light of my office in Antwerp his slight, lean features looked prematurely aged, but neither age nor hardship had changed the characteristically even Southern drawl.

“Sit down, Mr. Solslog,” I said. “We’re feeding eleven hundred thousand Belgians here, and clothing and giving work, too, but an American citizen certainly has a claim.”

His face reddened. “Thank you, suh, but it ain’t that sort of help I reequiah, Preehaps you did not understand me. I’m a-lookin’ for my sistah.”

“Yes?”

“She was in Maubeuge when the war broke out.” He pronounced it Maw-booge. “She was a governess, suh. I read in the Atlanta Constitution that war was declared. That was on a Sunday. I quit my job in the lumberyard an’ come straight over here on the old Saint Paul, and I ain’t found her—not yet.”

“But, Mr. Solslog, it’s February now. You left America in August?”

“Yes, suh,” he said gently. “I come in August.”

“Where have you been, then, in the meantime?” I demanded.

“Well, suh, first I went to Maw-booge.”

“The Germans captured Maubeuge on August 27th; they took the fortress on September 6th.”

“Yes, suh. I know they did. I was there. You don’t quite understand me. I was lookin’ for my sistah.”

The man amazed, angered, and puzzled me. Common-sense told me that the Germans allowed no one—least of all a stray American—to wander into Belgium, inside the German lines, on the flimsy excuse of “looking for his sister,” but here was just such a man. Worst of all, he really seemed simple and candid: the more dangerous as a spy, probably, though what he was to spy upon I had not the ghost of an idea.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch, Herr Solslog? Warum sind Sie hier in Belgien? Sind Sie Spion? Vous parlez FranÇais, n’est-ce pas? Vous Êtes espion, oui? ’ut U Veaamsch klappen?” I shot at him rapidly.

He smiled a smile which disarmed my suspicions, a pathetic, whimsical, puzzled smile. “People are always sayin’ things to me I cain’t understand in these here foreign countries. No, suh, I don’t understand any language but plain You-nited States. I can say ‘uh franc, doo franc’—that’s French, you know, suh—and I know ‘Muhsoor’, that’s French for ‘Mistah’ and ‘my sistah.’ I’ll never forget that word.

“It’s like this, suh: I got up almost to Maw-booge—oh, yes, suh, I had a pass. I got up there with the French. Just walked along with ’em; they couldn’t understand me; I couldn’t understand them, but we walked along. Then we got ’most to Maw-booge where my sistah was—red roofs, like all them pretty towns in France—I could see the town, fightin’ everywhere. I was with a battery, what they call swasuntcans. The officer could speak my language.

“‘Go back,’ he says. ‘Go with these refugee people.’ Everybody was runnin’ away—the fields was full of ’em, dirty and tired, but still runnin’. ‘Go to Paris,’ he says.

“‘But I’m lookin’ for my sistah,’ I says.

“‘She’ll most likely be in Paris. Go quick,’ he says.

“We was standin’ in a poppy field, his battery was firing in fours—pop! pop! pop! pop!—like that. A German ae-reoplane come over like a big bee and dropped a bomb. They screamed and run, everybody did, but the bomb busted and nothin’ come out but powdered lime. Then everybody laughed. But in three minutes more the Germans was a-droppin’ shells all over us. That lime was just a marker.

“They hit my officer friend. ‘Git out,’ he says again to me, ‘Git out quick.’ His fingers dug into the poppies, he was hurt so bad; hit in the stomach. Then he kind of smiled once and pulled off a poppy flower and held it up to me. ‘Here’s a red poppy—the blood of France,’ he says. ‘Take it as a souvenir, and git out.’

“They got me, though—the Germans did. I was in Mardeevay” (I have no idea what the name of the town was) “when they come in. After all the fightin’ I’d seen I went to sleep in a church, and along come the Germans. They was massacreein’ the people. They wanted to shoot me, too, but one of ’em understood my lingo and he took me to the gen’ral. ‘So you’re an English spy,’ he says politely. ‘We’ll examine you a little bit, and then we’ll have you shot. Good-day,’ he says. Then they drug me into a little room in the town hall and kep’ me there. But next day come a man who spoke You-nited States; he’d been in Birmingham, Alabama—funny, ain’t it, how they travel?—and he found out I wasn’t no spy.

“Then I went to Paris——”

“You went to Paris from inside the German lines?”

Mr. Solslog smiled his slow, child-like smile. “Yes, suh. It wasn’t hard a-tall. I was captured by the French. You see, suh, it ain’t hard to travel about in the war so long as the fightin’ is goin’ on. Them French peesants was captured by the Germans, then captured by the French, then captured by the Germans again, then captured by their own people again. It’s when the armies sits down and quits fightin’ on their feet that you cain’t git around. I could a-gone from Berlin right to Paris through all the fightin’ durin’ the first month of the war, before the battle of the Marne.

“Funny thing about that battle. I was all through it, and I never knowed till afterward in Paris that it was the battle of the Marne.

“Then I got to Paris. Paris was awful, half dead, Zeppelins comin’ over most every night, government in Bordoo. I got to the Embassy——”

“Mr. Solslog,” I interrupted, “how on earth did you get about knowing not a word of French?”

“Oh, I made mistakes, in course. But an American can do anything, suh; can git anywhere he has a mind to, I mean. They was always some one who could say a few words of my language—English Tommies, American reporters—they was everywhere I went.”

“But money?”

“I had a hundred and forty francs when I got to Paris. I paid for everything,” he said proudly, “and they never cheated me so’s I could notice it. They’re great people, the Frenchies. Once I worked for ’em two weeks in one of their field hospitals, just because I liked ’em. ‘Muhsoor luh American,’ they called me. ‘Muhsoor’—that’s French for ‘Mistah’ and my sis——But I told you that beefore.

“I got a pass from the Embassy——”

“How did you do that?”

“I told ’em about my sistah. They hadn’t had word about her, so I got the pass. Then I got a pass from General Caselnow and went to the front.” His tired eyes gleamed restlessly as he went on. “You-all here cain’t imagine it, I reckon, how dirty it is and how it stinks. War is mostly bad smells. The men cain’t wash, they’re covered with live things, flies is awful, rotten horses and rotten men have to lie about, sometimes for weeks, till people can bury ’em. Soldiers marching through a town you can smell for blocks sometimes.

“I got arrested, in course, but the Frenchies is always kind. It’s the English is hard. They locked me up in Calais; wouldn’t listen to me. I told ’em about my sistah, but they only laughed. They let me write to the Embassy, though, and Mr. Herrick made ’em release me. That was in November, I think, and I hadn’t had word of my sistah.

“Then I went to London on an empty horse transport. They knew I was stowed away on it, all right, and it was ’gainst orders, so they chased me—tried to find me all night. The transport was awful dirty after all them horses had been in it, but I had to git to London to see if they had got word of my sistah. I slid down a ventilator and lit in a horse stall. It half killed me: knocked me plum out and sprained my back so’s I couldn’t run no more. They come a-snoopin’ round with lanterns, right up into the stall, till the light fell plum on my face. I didn’t hardly breathe, but my hurt back seemed broken right through, so I says, ‘Here I am.’ An’ they found me.

“They talk a queer kind of language, the English do: it’s a little like ours, and they’re more like us Americans than the Frenchies, or the Dutchmen, or the Germans. They helped me up, cussed me out a lot; but they got hot water and bathed my back, and one of ’em, a dirty hostler from Chelsea, he bedded me down for the rest of the night and give me tobacco. So I got along all right. They smuggled me off.

“Mr. Page’s secretary in London told me they hadn’t heard of my sistah, and he sent me to see Hoover’s committee—the committee to send Americans home, preehaps you know. It was about closed up, but I didn’t want to go home, not without my sistah, and they hadn’t any word of her, so I went back to the Embassy. They was a man there. I misrecollect his name now, he was very good to me. He told me to go home. I says I wouldn’t—without my sistah I wouldn’t, so he helped me to git over to Holland. Oh, I forgot to tell you, suh, I was sick in London; had some kind of fever and stayed in the hospital two months. It hurts me still here,” he pointed solemnly at his forehead. “I had awful dreams: dreamed that the Germans had caught my sistah—they had her in a little house, and she was screamin’.” His eyes lighted dreadfully. “You-all cain’t understand it, preehaps, but I hear her screamin’ ’most every night and sometimes in the daytime if I ain’t feeling very well. Listen! Listen, suh! I’m huntin’ for my sistah, and you-all must help me! You-all’s got to help me, or I’ll—I’ll—I’ll go crazy—I’ll kill somebody!”

The soft Southern drawl mounted to a shriek, and my visitor had me by the throat. I fought him off desperately. His sickness had weakened him, or else he would have throttled me. Suddenly his hands relaxed, his eyes lost their light, and he spoke again in the slow, gentle voice he had first used:

“You-all must pardon me, suh. I—I’m right ashamed of myself. I’ve spoiled your tie.” He deftly rearranged the crumpled folds before I could interfere. “I—I reckon I’m not quite reesponsible when I think of—of things that might have happened. It’s seven months, suh, and I ain’t had word of my sistah.” He drew out a tattered paper, stamped with many stamps, sealed with many seals, and showed me a line in German script.

“To look for his sister, reported to be in Maubeuge at the beginning of the war.”

“I cain’t read what the German says,” he observed quietly.

“To go to Antwerp, Brussels, Mons, Charleroi, Maubeuge, Dinant, Namur, LiÉge,” I translated aloud, “to look for his sister.”

Months later Mr. Solslog came again. “There is a gentleman in the reception room waiting for monsieur: an American gentleman——” Leon shrugged his shoulders expressively, spread out his palms, and went on in a rapid whisper: “He asked for monsieur. Nothing else could I understand. He has waited for monsieur four hours, and he talks, talks to himself always!”

From the hall I heard a steady gentle voice talking, talking, talking. “Mr. Solslog,” I hailed him. The voice stopped. He must have stepped swiftly from the thick carpet to the tiled floor of the hall, for he came like a man running.

“You-all here, suh,” he asked, without an interrogative lift to the question. “Let me—let me hold on to your hand for a minute. I—I’m right glad to see you. They’ve just—I’ve just got out.” He gathered his voice and breath for a tremendous effort. His next sentence came like a blast of prophecy. “Oh, may God damn the Germans!” he screamed.

“Leon,” I shouted, “bring brandy, quick!”

“Oh, no, suh; not for me. I don’t use it.” Mr. Solslog gently released my hands and walked beside me into the reception room. His face was whiter than before, the lines in it deeper, and the pathetic, patient eyes stranger than when I had seen him last; but the fever fit of passion passed and left him calm as usual.

“I haven’t found my sistah—it isn’t that,” he explained in his slow, drawling voice. “I’ve jist got out of prison here in Antwerp, suh. I told the German officer if I ever see him again I’ll kill him. I’m going to kill him if I ever see him again. I’m going to——”

“Yes, yes,” I said soothingly. The monotonous recitative I had heard on first entering the house had begun.

“I told him I’d kill him, I’d kill him, suh, kill him, I’d kill him——”

“But your sister?”

“Oh, yes.” He gathered himself together. “I went to Brussels and Charleyroy—I say I’ll kill him—and Maw-booge. She ain’t there—at none of those places. I dream about her all the time, I see her and hear her. Preehaps you don’t altogether understand me. Suh—they’re chokin’ her—and—and mistreatin’ her, the Germans are, suh; and she’s callin’ to me—screamin’ and callin’—I told him I’d kill him! Then I come back to Malines. I got a paper from the burgomaster to go out and see ’em diggin’ up the dead Belgian soldiers and buryin’ ’em in new cemeteries.” Some wild, morbid impulse must have led him to do this thing. “And the Germans caught me, suh. They said my passport was expired. I cain’t read German, suh, so how was I to know? They drug me up here to Antwerp, and a German officer—I told him I’d kill him—and in the police place, he said I was an English spy. They stripped me, suh. They searched my skin. They took photygraphs of my clothes and looked at my collar against a light. They even went over my money with a microscope and looked under my hair to see if anything was tattooed on to me. I told that officer I’d kill him!

“‘Where is your baggage?’ he says.

“‘I haven’t got any.’

“‘You damned spy’—I told him I’d kill him—‘you dirty spy,’ he says.

“‘I’m just as clean as you are,’ I told him. ‘I buy a shirt when I need it. I reckon I’m as clean as you, and I’ll kill you!’

“He jumped at me and beat me with his fists. ‘I’ll kill you! Some day I’ll kill you,’ I says. They wouldn’t let me sleep; hectored me for two nights, but ‘I’ll kill you,’ I says to him. ‘I’ll——’”

He rose to his feet and faced me, then his knees sagged, and slowly, very slowly, he fell over in a dead faint.

There is little to add to this strange tale. The wilder wanderings of a sick mind followed the wild wanderings of his broken body. He was lodged in a private house where he had good care, but his case was hopeless from the start. About a month before his death I received a note written in his own hand. It read:

“They says I am vury sick but I doo not beleeve them in a few days moor I am gooen back to Mawbooj. I beleeve my sister is there still goodbie.

Yurs truly
Mr. Solslog.”

His sister was never found.